Saul Bellow Quotes

Once someone appears to us primarily as an object, kindness has no place to root.

When I first read 'The River,' I had theories on what it was about, but once we got into rehearsal, I realized it's much simpler: It's about how human beings try to connect. The play holds a mirror up to the audience, and they take from it what's relevant to their lives.

Each contact with a human being is so rare, so precious, one should preserve it.

I love experiencing other people's realities, seeing the world through their eyes for a short period of time.

The real business of life is trying to understand each other.

I'm constantly being influenced by the soul that's directly in front of me.

I wasn't good at being affable. You get beyond that and realise the attraction in any human being has more to do with what they give to someone rather than just being face candy.

My only self-confidence and satisfaction comes from the people that I do meet; I have fondness for people. I mean, I like to hug. And I also like to be hugged.

I never dreamed I would have a job in which so many people could touch me and I could touch them.

My only wish is... to transform friends of God into friends of man.

When people do come face to face with each other as human beings, they begin to understand each other better.

I always try to get in the back of the audience because people really want to get close to me, and I want to get close to them.

It is easier to treat people as objects to be manipulated if you have never learned any other way to see them.

I find inspiration in each and every person that I cross paths with. Every human being I interact with offers me a significant insight on some aspect of life.

I enjoy learning about other people. I really didn't understand that until 'Moonlight.'

This may be a bit of a broad statement, but I don't think there's anyone that I've met that I haven't created a bit of a deep relationship with. It's a really lovely thing to create a relation with people that might not anticipate that closeness. And that's kind of the light of my life, getting to be close to people.

I'm really interested in how we understand each other - and whether we can understand each other.

It's perfectly clear to me that religion is a myth. It's something we have invented to explain the inexplicable. My religion and the spiritual side of my life come from a sense of connection to the humankind and nature on this planet and in the universe. I am in overwhelming awe of it all: It is so fantastic, so complex, so beyond comprehension. What does it all mean -- if it has any meaning at all? But how can it all exist if it doesn't have some kind of meaning? I think anyone who suggests that they have the answer is motivated by the need to invent answers, because we have no such answers.

I've been treated as less than human, as a thing, as a pawn. And just because I don't have a Bible or a microphone-just because I don't draw millions of people on TV-doesn't mean I'm not human.

Life is a matter of dealing with other people, in little matters and cataclysmic ones, and that means a series of conversations.

And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things.

To touch the soul of another human being is to walk on holy ground.

I'm not a spiritual person at all, but I do think that the world doesn't have to be as lonely as it is.

If you knew the immensity of what it means to be human, you would not talk about God or Heaven.

The spiritual life is a reaching out to our innermost self, to our fellow human and to our God.